Pamela Thorburn interview: The aches, breaks and pains of a ski cross racer

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What was it like being selected for the British alpine ski team when 17 years old? I was selected for all alpine disciplines in 2003. It was amazing coming into the set up then. We had perhaps the strongest British alpine team ever in terms of numbers of skiers ranked in the World’s top 100, with people like Alain Baxter, Chemmy Alcott and Finlay Mickel all scoring great results. Our coaching team was excellent and we had really good physio and sports science support, all based at the Olympic training centre in Lofer in Austria.

Growing up, who was your biggest influence in alpine ski racing? I learnt a lot from the Baxter brothers, Noel and Alain [the Scottish alpine skiers]. I grew up in awe of Alain, yet in real life he’s so modest and down to earth. I had never really followed a proper fitness programme before I was selected to the team, but after that I went up to Aviemore in Scotland and trained with Noel and Alain three times a day. It made a huge difference to my skiing and I’ve kept up the training ever since.

At the time I got to know him, Alain was going through a lot – he’d won bronze in slalom at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, but was then disqualified for failing a drug test. He had all the stress of trying to clear his name, which he eventually did, though he didn’t get the medal back, yet he always had time to give advice to the youngsters on the team.

What was your best season as an alpine racer? That’s a tough one because I’ve been plagued by injury. I had a lot of really good results leading up to the 2006 Turin Olympics, but then I crashed when training for giant slalom (GS) and broke my knee. The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) was torn and I shattered the top of my tibia plateau and had quite a few complications coming back from the injury. I don’t think I ever skied GS that well again, so I switched to a speed based programme, focusing on downhill and super G.

It wasn’t necessarily easier, but I found I had a much better feeling for the speed events.

Did you get to train much with Chemmy Alcott? Chem mostly trained with other teams, so I didn’t get to ski with her that much. She was always really friendly and supportive when I saw her at races though. In 2010 I trained with her and the Canadian team and realised what I’d been missing – being pushed by some of the best athletes in the world. Having them as training mates made me take a huge step forward, plus it was the first time in my career that I’d had a full team set up with multiple coaches, doctors, physios and a ski technician. I started to ski really well and scored some podium places ahead of girls who had recently raced the Vancouver Olympics – but then I got injured again.

What have your worst injuries been? When I was 16 I broke my neck training in Méribel. It was really frightening because I didn’t know it was broken until I woke up the next day and couldn’t move. The worst thing was having to go to hospital in France. I hate French hospitals because you never know what’s going on and the doctors are always so hectic.

Then there was the knee injury in Lofer, Austria, in 2006, and after that I managed to break both my hips in quick succession. I broke the left one in Chile in 2009, then the right in Aspen in 2010. I’ve dislocated both my shoulders countless times, and have had an injury pretty much every season.

Thorburn in hospital following surgery after repeatedly dislocating her shoulder

Have you ever questioned whether the sport is worth the risks? At the end of last season I properly questioned myself for the first time. I’m not as young as I once was and I don’t heal as fast; but I love skiing and I still believe I can be competitive, so long as I have that I’ll carry on.

Chemmy’s husband Dougie Crawford announced that he’s taking a year away from downhill racing this season, and the reasons he gave were very close to how I was feeling. It gets very emotionally and mentally draining, struggling to raise the money to fund a season’s racing, with absolutely no support from any governing body.

Is ski cross more dangerous than downhill? I’m not sure if it’s more dangerous, but there’s more that can go wrong and you are less in control of your own destiny. The weekend that I did my first ski cross race, a Europa Cup event in Sweden, Nick Zoricic, a Canadian skier I knew from his alpine racing days, was killed in a ski cross crash at the Grindelwald 2012 World Cup. It spelt out straight away just how dangerous the sport can be.

I’m also good friends with Maria Komissarova from Russia, who was paralysed on the Olympic course in Sochi earlier this year. She’s getting treatment at a clinic in Spain at the moment that costs about €1,000 a day, and she’ll be there for 15 weeks. It seems to be working though – I hear she can now stand at least.

And I’ve had my fair share of ski cross knocks too. In my first season racing I developed stress fractures in both my shins from all the hard landings, and crashed and fractured my eye-socket last season.

Do you ever regret not taking up a safer sport, like curling perhaps? Absolutely not! Can you imagine me as a curler?

I just love the adrenalin and excitement of ski cross and don’t think I would ever be able to live without skiing. I’ve looked at competing on the Freeride World Tour though and really enjoyed testing the big mountain skis with the Telegraph Ski and Snowboard test team last season.

When and why did you switch to ski cross? Just before the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Snowsport GB went bust. I lost my coach and with that my chance to make the Games. In my eight years racing, I watched the British alpine ski team go from the best funded it had ever been to complete collapse.

I was on my own without any kind of programme or support, but I really wanted to compete and still felt I had more to give. I looked into track cycling because at the time Alain had just been for Commonwealth Games trials at the velodrome in Manchester, but decided on ski cross because I couldn’t give up the mountains.

If anything there was even less funding for ski cross at the time, but I took a chance because I saw this awesome discipline and really wanted to see if I’d be any good at it.

Thorburn says she saw the Team GB alpine ski team near collapse

Do you think the British Olympic qualifying criteria for ski cross at Sochi were too stringent? The ski cross criteria just didn’t make sense and seemed to be set by someone who didn’t understand the anything-can-happen nature of the sport. You needed two World Cup top 24 finishes, and had to be within four per cent of the fastest qualifying time. Some people who went on to win World Cup competitions last season were more than four per cent out of the fastest time in qualifying. The Olympic bronze medallist Jonathan Midol only qualified for the Games in 30th place. Criteria are supposed to be difficult, but should also be fair.

Will the £4.8m lottery funding boost to Team GB skiing and snowboarding help ski cross? No. Although we come under the freestyle banner, ski cross is not a supported programme. I think it’s great that the slopestyle athletes are being funded, but it will be of no benefit to my racing. I have done some work with the Scottish freestyle coach Neil MacGrain at Bearsden dry slope near Glasgow, working on the kicker, but we’ve not been able to set up anything on snow.

How do you raise the money for a racing season? I organise a few fundraising events, have some sponsorship and also work when I can throughout the year. I’m now a qualified Cross-Fit trainer [a type of all-round fitness programme] so I’m earning a bit of extra money doing that.

What about the photo shoot for Loaded magazine, did that help raise funds? I knew what I was getting into with the Loaded photo shoot, back in December 2012 – it was a lot of fun and great exposure (although that’s probably not the best choice of words). A couple of things did result from it.

Is the plan to keep racing ski cross until the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in 2018? Yes, I’m committed to making it to South Korea, but I’m taking each season as it comes. I just had another minor setback as I got knocked off my bike in Holland by a car turning in front of me.

It’s not the way I wanted to start the season, but it’s just torn ligaments in my thumb and ankle… Could be worse! I’m healing and itching to get back on my skis and return to the mountains. I’ll be competing for the full season on the ski cross tour; we have World Championships in early 2015 so my sights are firmly set on that.